Friday, July 06, 2007

turn around

I go back outside and the fire is all but extinguished. I can see a few glowing dots on the ridge line. All the people who were standing in the drizzle staring at the fire are gone. I can now see what must be very high powered flashlights bobbing and sweeping through the forest silhouette on the ridge line. I can still hear the helicopter, but it is no longer directly overhead. And now I notice the half moon has risen and is now comfortably over the ridge.

1 comment:

I'm not sure I can go to sleep, but there doesn't seem to be anything else to do. All the adults have gone to bed: only the undergraduates are up socializing. That was really intense, at least for me. Funny, I was just thinking the other day that I hadn't experienced the Kantian sublime in the face of a force of nature since I was a teenager, and things hit me much harder.